The McCain campaign hauled out a big gun today on national security: Rudy Giuliani. He told the conference call that the debate on terrorism is important because of the large differences between Obama and McCain. Giuliani described it as between being on the defensive rather than the offensive. Before 9/11, our strategy was unrealistic in retrospect. There was no meaningful follow-up to the criminal prosecution in 1993 for WTC I, no recognition that war had been declared on the US.

At the time, we may not have recognized the pattern, but we certainly do now. Returning to that state of ignorance after all that has transpired since would be a huge step backwards. Hillary Clinton called Obama “irresponsible and naive”, and Giuliani understands why.

Giuliani likened the Boumediene decision to the efforts of the Warren Court to kneecap law enforcement against domestic crime. “We have to follow the Supreme Court’s decisions,” Giuliani said, but the court assigned rights to enemy detainees that have never existed before.

Questions:

• Jake Tapper, ABC: In 2003, McCain visited Gitmo and wrote a letter to Donald Rumsfeld urging him to either try the detainees or release them. How does that differ from Boumediene? — Congress created the procedures to give detainees an evidentiary hearing, one that could be appealed to the DC appellate circuit court. Obama is saying that the 1993 strategy is better than the forward strategy adopted by the Bush administration.
• AP: Is Barack Obama really saying that he wants to adopt a law-enforcement issue, and when is it appropriate to prosecute terrorists? — Obama’s the one who adopted the 1993 WTC trial as the paradigm, and that shows his mindset. Obama was asked what he would do if AQ attacked two American cities, and the answer was that we needed an emergency response, as opposed to Hurricane Katrina. When terrorism takes place on American soil and we capture the terrorists here, then we have to use the civil prosecution, but that can’t be the end of it.
• Me: Nuremberg, and Stupid vs Smart? — Nuremberg did not offer habeas rights to the defendants despite Obama’s continued references. Giuliani says that “stupid vs smart” is partisan excess, but no one can doubt that we’ve been kept safe since 2001. There have been at least 20 planned attacks that have been foiled thanks to the strategies after 9/11 that Giuliani can recall. Now that we understand the nature of the threat, why would we go back to the failed reactive strategies?
• Dana Bash, CNN: Wasn’t WTC I a domestic act? — Certainly, and the terrorists should have been prosecuted — but that shouldn’t have been the end of it. With the benefit of hindsight, we can see that this attack was just the first attempt by AQ. The prosecution obviously didn’t incapacitate the terrorist network. Jailing a murderer incapacitates him, but jailing a few members of an international terrorist network doesn’t incapacitate the network or reduce the threat to the US.

Update: Here’s Giuliani making the same point on Fox News: